


all the pain of yesterday

by Flora_Obsidian



Series: found families [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Force Ghosts, Gen, Rain, Rey Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: D'Qar is always humid, but the brief time that Rey spends there is at the height of its dry season, and then the next base they find themselves on also finds her fighting off illness in the medical wing, and then there's quite a lot of things to occupy her-- trying to understand a relationship with Poe and Finn-- Jedi training-- trying to understand a relationship with her family-- no small number of missions for the Resistance.In short, it's a long while after leaving Jakku before she gets to properly experience weather outside of the desert.





	all the pain of yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff?? In _my_ Star Wars 'verse???? It's more likely than you think.
> 
> (Have some of my precious desert child playing in the rain.)

D'Qar is always humid, but the brief time that Rey spends there is at the height of its dry season, and then the next base they find themselves on also finds her fighting off illness in the medical wing, and then there's quite a lot of things to occupy her-- trying to understand a relationship with Poe and Finn-- Jedi training-- trying to understand a relationship with her _family_ \-- no small number of missions for the Resistance.

In short, it's a long while after leaving Jakku before she gets to properly experience weather outside of the desert.

“ _Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey.”_

“Nngh.”

“ _Rey.”_

She cracks an eye open. Her room is dark, and there are too many zeroes on the chrono opposite her bunk for it to be a reasonable hour of the morning. Her grandfather is beaming.

“Is s'mn dyin?”

“ _...No?”_

“Shhhhhh.... sleep.”

He rolls his eyes. _“C'mon, kiddo, this is something you're gonna want to see.”_

Rey turns over to face the wall and pulls the covers up around her shoulders, burrowing into the soft warmth.

“ _Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey.”_

……Force, but her cousin is either deaf or stubborn as hell.

“...Grandpa.”

“ _Rey.”_

* * *

She stumbles down mostly-empty Resistance hallways next to the ghost of her grandfather, wrapped in a coat she still doesn't feel comfortable in-- she never owned a coat before, but now that she's in the Resistance, she needs a wardrobe, or something? Multiple outfits? There's a learning curve. It's a heavy, bulky thing, but Grandpa had insisted when she finally acquiesced and rolled out of her bunk to find whatever it was he wanted her to see.

Rey follows him without paying much attention to where they're going, so she doesn't notice that they keep taking halls and stairs that lead to the roofs until she hears-- something. Like sand in a sandstorm, but heavier, a million fingertips drumming against a hollowed wall.

“What?”

Grandpa looks at her expectantly. He hasn't stopped smiling yet _“Come on, come and see.”_

She goes-- taps her access codes into the panel next to one of the doors leading out to the roof-- is immediately hit with a strong gust of air and the spray of water, and she yelps in surprise.

It's _falling from the sky_.

She can do nothing but stare at it, only realizing that her jaw his dropped open in surprise when some of the water gets into her mouth, too-- her trousers are soaking through, though most of her remains dry because of the heavy coat around her-- and still so early in the morning, everything is pitch black except for the floodlights around the base that light up the droplets falling from the dark like tiny shooting stars. She steps out into the storm, door shutting behind her, holding out her hands to let the liquid pool in her palms. Her boots splash in puddles across the duracrete surface as she hops and steps from one to another, delighting in all of it.

She sits and lets the water spill from her fingers to join the water pooling underneath her and tilts her head back, eyes half-shut. Water drips down her face, her hair. Some gets past her collar and trickles down her back.

“It's raining!” she exclaims, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

She can see the blue glow of her grandfather's presence out of the corner of her eye as he sits next to her-- she can picture his smile, too, something fond and gentle. _“Did it ever rain on Yavin?”_

“I don't know,” she tells him, but for once, thinking of the life she hardly remembers doesn't hurt so much. “But this is familiar, I recognize it, so it must have.” And then, after only a moment's pause, “When did you see rain for the first time?”

“ _A few weeks after I was brought to the Temple, I would think.”_ He tilts his face up to the sky, the rain passing through him. _“The weather is artificially controlled on Coruscant. It rains once a month from sundown to sunup. I thought the building was under attack. And natural rain... one of the offworld missions I went on with Obi-Wan.”_

“ _It rained often on Naboo.”_ Grandma settles on Rey's other side, dress pooling around her as she sits. _“Sometimes for days. Everything was so green.”_

“There's so much green in the universe.” She smiles again, and closes her eyes once more, and lets the water drip drip drip down her face. It's _frigid_ , and she's already starting to shiver, and she doesn't particularly care. “So much _rain_.”

For a moment – just a moment, brief and fleeting and spiteful – she finds herself hating. She could have had a life spent with family, could have had a life filled with green and rain and laughter, and instead she's lost her childhood much of her innocence along with it. But Rey has never been one to hate – anger, yes, anger has kept her alive, in the desert, sometimes, and there _are_ a rare few things she truly hates, and she finds her energy is better spent on other things. She breathes in the smell of the rain (and some of the rain itself, too, by accident) and lets it all out in a slow exhale.

She has green things now, and rain, and a family, too, even if she doesn't always know what to do with them. Friends, and a home with the Resistance, and a roof over her head, and food to eat. It could be worse. All of it could be... much worse. Hating does her no good at all.

Her grandparents are watching her fondly when she opens her eyes again. “It's cold,” she tells them, quite cheerfully. “And wet.”

“ _Are you going to go back in, then?”_ asks her grandfather with a raised eyebrow, and her grandmother chuckles quietly.

“ _Are you actually asking that question?”_

Rey stays outside for-- longer than she should, probably, given that she's been trying to avoid getting sick again. Her teeth are clattering together when she finally slips back in, the gray of the storm now only somewhat lighter with the dawning of the day, and her boots have little lakes inside of them that squish with every footstep, and she drips water all of the way back to her room in the barracks (and catches some strange looks along the way, as she grins all the while).

“ _...So are you glad I woke you up?”_

She throws a wet sock at her grandfather; it fazes straight through him and hits the wall with a sad-sounding _plop_. “Yes, old man, but now I'm going back to _sleep_.”

“ _Old **man** ,”_ he echoes, sounding horrified, and Grandma laughs and laughs and laughs.

“ _Sleep well, Rey,”_ she says, and Rey smiles once more at them both.

“Goodnight, Grandma, Grandpa.”


End file.
